Page:History of Art in Primitive Greece - Mycenian Art Vol 1.djvu/520

Secondary Forms. 493 A further proof, if such were needed, would be found in the condition of many of these bases. Their edges have been eaten by fire, but the centre is hardly touched ; proving that ere the fire which consumed all the woodwork penetrated the centre of the base, the wooden pillar had separated and fallen from its plinth. This is all the information respecting wooden supports which study of the ruins supplies us with. We are as confident of their existence in the palace, and that in no small numbers, as if they had not stirred from their bases. It seems probable that the building in question had all its woodwork, including the pillars, overlaid with a coat of paint if not with metal plates. A capital is required at the point of junction between jamb and architrave, to enlarge the field of contact and re-assure the eye as to the solidity of the support. Shaft and capital are gone; yet their proportions and the profile of the capital are known to us from those seen at the entrance of the Tomb of Atreus, and over the Lions Gate at Mycenae, as well as from those figured, in small, on ivory and glass pastes. As this column never had a separate existence of its own, its value is but that of a copy or reproduction ; the strange forms which serve to characterize it were invented ere it came into being, notably its entasis, whose diameter is less above than below. It tapers downwards, contrary to all known types of the column, whose greater or lesser diminution is effected from summit to base.^ So unusual, so opposed is this arrangement to that of all other architectures which make use of the column, that at first it was thought to be due to a mistake on the part of the observers who had pointed it out. At last we had to surrender to the logic of facts. The column seen over the Lions Gate is 365 centi- metres round above the plinth, and 415 centimetres under the first moulding of the capital.^ This same peculiar contraction is observable in the fragmental shaft rising at the entrance to ^ In Egypt, where the pillar presents so great a variety of shapes, we find once, and once only, a column whose greatest diameter occurs towards the capital. It is found in the great avenue at Karnac which goes by the name of King Thothmes, who constructed it. But we should regard this specimen as the whim of an architect who was minded to produce something not seen before. The shape he invented found little favour, and was never reproduced again. 2 I measured the shaft in question from a cast preserved in the Berlin Museum.